


so I sold my soul for this?

by the_eighth_sin



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, post-Kaiju
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:16:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_eighth_sin/pseuds/the_eighth_sin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They meet Jazmine at the gates to the graveyard. Raleigh hides the way his hands are trembling by curling them into fists and burying them into the pockets of his civvies. Yancy curls an arm around their sisters’ shoulders and presses a kiss to her finely coiffed hair.</p>
<p>They kiss her tear stained cheeks (It’s the last thing they ever do for her) and walk away with a last look at the pile of fresh earth that will house their Mom for eternity. Raleigh wonders whether he will see her sooner, rather than later. He wonders if the fatalists are right to think that the Kaiju attacks are the first wave of the apocalypse, and that God will soon reach down from the heavens and pluck them from their homes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so I sold my soul for this?

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer, I claim no ownership of characters or plot, blah blah.
> 
> A million thanks to [ Melanie](https://twitter.com/epistolic) for reading this when it was just the mad ramblings of a girl in love with a ridiculous robot movie.

_Dad, you don’t have to go. Please don’t go._

-

They meet Jazmine at the gates to the graveyard. Raleigh hides the way his hands are trembling by curling them into fists and burying them into the pockets of his civvies. Yancy curls an arm around their sisters’ shoulders and presses a kiss to her finely coiffed hair.

They are the only people who actually turn up and Raleigh hides a wavering laugh as he thinks about those last few weeks before they left for Ranger training. Mom carrying ruby red handkerchiefs to hide the way her every cough sprayed blood, how their neighbours brought casseroles and empty promises. None of them turn up.

None of them would dare. Somebody, _‘One of those bitches’_ , Raleigh spits, told child services that their father was gone, their mother was dead and Yancy was unfit to care for his baby brother and sister.

They kiss Jazmine’s tear stained cheeks (It’s the last thing they ever do for her) and walk away with a last look at the pile of fresh earth that will house their Mom for eternity. Raleigh wonders whether he will see her sooner, rather than later. He wonders if the fatalists are right to think that the Kaiju attacks are the first wave of the apocalypse, and that God will soon reach down from the heavens and pluck them from their homes (or, bunkers and jaegers. He does that to Yancy on their fifth ride and Raleigh thinks, was it me? was I cocky? stupid useless hopeless, with every lumbering step Gipsy takes towards the shore.)

They never find Yancy’s body; bury an empty coffin in a shallow grave, and Raleigh stands surrounded by groupies and colleagues alike, feeling entirely alone. He vows never to trust himself again.

-

Pentecost asks whether he would rather die building the wall or in a jaeger and Raleigh bites his tongue of the _‘I would rather die with him. I’d rather it took me. I’d rather step off this wall than lose somebody else. I’ve got nobody else.’_

-

Raleigh steps into the kwoon with a steadying breath and takes down each of the candidates carefully. Mako says he’s taking too long and his reply gets stuck in his throat ( _no risks we don’t take risks don’t get cocky kid_.) He takes a trembling breath instead and wishes she would take him down hard enough to shake the echoing voice of his lost brother from his head.

-

Herc is the same as always, a military man through and through. Chuck is Herc without that discipline. Chuck is the perfect distraction. Proud and angry and perfectly happy to smack Raleigh around if he feels like it. 

He always feels like it.

( _You like him don’t you?_ Yancy asks and it’s the same words he said when they were in Sydney and were introduced to Herc for the first time. Raleigh was young, had everything a guy could ask for, he’d taken down Kaiju hundreds of feet tall and yet when he looked at Herc from across the room and Yancy murmured in his ear, he felt all of 5 again, watching his daddy walk away and begging _Please don’t go_.)

-

It’s past 3am and Raleigh can’t sleep (hasn’t slept, not properly, in 5 years. There’s an empty space inside of him) and Newt is stepping out of the shower, anti-blue gel in one hand, the other holding up the thin towel wrapped around his hips. 

“Oh! Hey!” he exclaims and Raleigh wonders if Newt can actually speak without sounding constantly ecstatic. He grunts in reply because it’s early and Raleigh is so tired that he got lost twice on the way to the bathroom and only found this one by chance.

And then Newt turns around and there he is, etched in almost perfect detail across the planes of Newt’s back. 

Knifehead.

Raleigh sees the bright blue of a plasma gun, the orange sparks of Gipsy being torn apart, the black emptiness of Yancy’s mind being torn from his own _come on Raleigh he hears don’t get cocky kid_ and he’s gasping for breath, cradling the little spark of Yancy that got left behind as carefully as he can. 

“I can’t.” he says and blinks once, twice, three times, rainbow at the edge of his vision receding enough that he can see white tiles, two inches from his face and feel the hand on his shoulder shaking slightly.

“Come on Becket, deep breaths.”

It’s not the first panic attack he’s had since Anchorage, but it’s the first that somebody saw. Newt knows then (and after, when he’s torn from the hive mind, Raleigh knows Newt understands too) about the bit of Yancy that still dances in Raleigh’s head. He wondered if it was entirely mental, if _he_ was mental, but Newt explains that the neural handshake works a little bit like a lock and when that gets ripped away, sometimes, things get left behind.

“So I’m not crazy?” he asks and Newt doesn’t laugh. He just shakes his head and Raleigh can’t decide if it’s worse, thinking he’s losing his mind (and not caring because Yancy is still there) or knowing that the voice in his head really is a part of his brother that he didn’t lose, the only part of him left on Earth.

-

They save the world and lose too many friends to count. The Wei triplets go down, and then the Kaidonovsky’s drown. (Raleigh knows they’re lucky. He’d always imagined they’d go down together. He wouldn’t wish this feeling, of a black sucking emptiness, on anybody) Newt is almost killed by a mobster and eaten, and then tries to kill himself by Drifting with a monster. Herc gets hurt and Chuck gets into Striker Eureka with Marshal Pentecost and doesn’t come back.

Raleigh catches sight of Herc at a press conference, announcing the closing of the Breach, announcing the memorial, announcing that the program will be deactivated. He looks lost. Raleigh thinks about his childhood, about growing up with Yancy always there, a constant, and wonders whether it hurts more losing the child your wife died for, or losing the man that child had become. Herc still calls Chuck ‘my boy’ and Raleigh knows exactly how long it takes to stop turning to your left to check if somebody is still there. ( _Never, you never stop waiting_ ) Max follows Herc like a smaller shadow. Raleigh didn’t know that dogs could seem so sad.

-

Mako looks almost as haunted as Raleigh did, back in the day. The Drift hangover from the battle is painful, and all Raleigh wants to do is climb into his bunk and hide his face in Mako’s stomach and not move for a month. They manage one night before their responsibilities come knocking. They’re spokespeople for the program now, they have to argue with government’s who want to use Jaeger tech for more nefarious purposes. 

The last 7 years of peace disappear along with the Kaiju.

Humans always need somebody to fight. Raleigh thinks, it’s just a shame they chose each other.

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU FOR READING! This was written in the car during a thunderstorm just after I'd read the first few chapters of the Pacific Rim novelisation. THAT MOVIE WAS PHENOMENAL THAT BOOK WAS PHENOMENAL I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT ALL OF IT.
> 
> To be really honest, I can never hope to match up to any of the talent of this fandom, but I like to think I gave it a pretty solid go here :)


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